


Whirlwind.

by fan_nerd



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Growing Up, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4334603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fan_nerd/pseuds/fan_nerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave makes a last-second decision to hightail it out of Austin when he comes back from his semester abroad. He decides to finish college in Seattle despite all the risks, and just happens to wind up with a pretty awesome roommate through an online posting. John's just a cool guy struggling through his early twenties too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I’d like to thank any and everyone who’s opened this crazy fic and decided to give it a shot. Lots of days I sat around tired after work and didn’t let this story happen even though it desperately wanted to. It's very close to my heart. I’m glad to happily work this out of my system, and I hope you enjoy the ride! :)
> 
> (As a sidenote, I will probably update every two to three days. I'm an impatient updater, ha, ha, and the story is finished.)

His room feels strange. 

He’d left it four months ago. He’d lived in it off and on for twenty-one years before that, but after heading to Italy and coming back to Austin, it looks wrong. There are books he doesn’t remember buying, his turntables are a little too neat, and the air is killing him. 

Instead of doing something sensible, like eating an entire pizza, being a little depressed, and getting ready to go back to his home university, he hightails it out of the apartment, uses the remainder of his loan money to hop on a bus (or five) and heads for Washington. He picks the state because it’s the other side of the country. He does online applications for a couple public art colleges in Seattle, makes a lot of phone calls, and books a cheap hotel for a few days. 

He decides to make his life even more hellish by filing as an independent and posting a listing online for a roommate, because he knows more than anyone that living on campus sucks.

It takes him nearly two days to arrive, smelly and surly, voice wrecked from so many goddamn calls. There’s still quite a bit of money in his pocket, he’s miraculously managed to get in-state tuition for his new school despite barely deserving it and making this shit up entirely on the fly two days ago. Beyond that, one school even rush accepted him. 

Dave thinks he can take that as a sign that the universe agrees: his choice to move back home after a semester abroad was completely shitty.

For the next week, he answers hits about the apartment situation online, chats with a few potentials, and arranges meetings with the _really, really_ potential ones. When he’s not doing that, he’s fervently applying for jobs. His boredom and onset depression are lessened just slightly by keeping his fingers busy, but he’s restless as all fucking hell. 

One day, he wanders out of his hotel, hair a tragedy and phone off half the time, thinking, _I used to be so good at staring at the ceiling all day and waiting for Bruce Wayne to crash through the window and growl at me to wake up and stop being such a pussy._

Mostly, he just wants to _feel_ like himself again.

He turns his phone on an hour later at the convenience store near his hotel. It buzzes with a notification. 

 _“hi!”_ The message starts, _“my name is john. you seem like a pretty cool guy. welcome to seattle by the way! if you’re still looking for a roommate, we should meet up for coffee some time later.”_  

Dave clicks the guy’s provided link to his social media. He verifies that he’s real. He checks out his picture and laughs for a moment about his dorky teeth.

He texts back, “ _okay but could you give me an address because im not exactly winning any awards in the whole city exploration department”._

Once he’s purchased an apple and a nasty hotdog, his phone buzzes again. _“sure dude. see you soon. looking forward to it!”_  

//

There’s a guy in line that is handsome in the most horrifically nerdy way. He’s tan, built, and not actually that tall. His crooked teeth, wild hair, and librarian glasses are also surprisingly fitting. Since he has looked at his pictures, Dave knows exactly who he is.

“Heya!” John waves to him, whisking the tall blonde next to him once he’s inside the shop. “You’re a little early.”

“Ain’t one to make a gentleman wait,” Dave murmurs, relaxing despite himself. “Bit early yourself, man.”

“I wasn’t really doing anything else since I’m off today. It’s summer and all my friends are in school. Can you believe that?” The darker haired man rolls his eyes. “It’s like they’d never take the summer off to _work_ or something.” 

“Oh, the _humanity_ ,” Dave replies. They both snicker over that and stop just in time to place their orders with the barista. 

The meeting goes swimmingly. John says he sometimes piles up laundry too high, that he is _not_ cheap as hell, and has a personal vendetta against Betty Crocker. Dave says he straight up refuses to drink orange soda for reasons he will not divulge and that his favorite food is mac-and-cheese.

John also laughs about how often Dave sprinkles the words _bruh, man, dude, yo, ain’t,_ and _y’all_ into his speech. Dave laughs about John’s buckteeth and his use of the adjective _granola_ for people who are some new age cross of hipsters and hippies. 

They spend the last hour cruising websites for great deals on apartments downtown near both of their universities. They give up on finding a two-bedroom because they can save money that way and they don’t think it’ll be a problem to share. 

Once they call a few places and ask about deals, they arrange to catch a bus to the best option together. John points out the cool places to eat and hang out that they pass through the window.

It’s a little stupid and more than a little impulsive, but they sign the lease that day. Dave has enough money for the deposit, spotting John until they move in next week.

When they part, Dave actually feels normal again for a few hours.

 

//

The day they move in, Dave receives an email from a coffee shop. The very one he and John visited the day they signed the lease. “Oh, that’s cool! You gonna schedule an interview?” Dave shrugs. He _is_ going to, but John doesn’t need to know all his business all the time. “Hey man, if they don’t take you, you could always work at my restaurant.” 

The blonde’s eyes widen behind his sunglasses. “You _own_ a restaurant?” 

“No, duh,” John rolls his eyes with a big smile. “I _work_ at one. Big difference.” 

 _Right_ , Dave thinks. _That makes more sense._ “I dunno. You’re grinning like a maniac there, Egbert. It’s kinda making me think that your restaurant only hires people that look like entirely too excited nerds or otherwise serial killers. Man, don’t say both, because that would totally ruin this whole _moving-in-in-a-friendly-way_ vibe we had going here.”

John laughs loudly. “Dude, no! Everyone’s cool, it’s really nice. I love it and I make great tips.”

After a moment, he asks, “I know this is absolutely hands down a ridiculous question, but do you think I can I work with my sunglasses on?”

“Yeah, probably?” John shrugs. “Tell them it’s medical or something. It’s kind of a dive, maybe they’ll like them.”

“Right on.”

//

It takes a few more weeks for job stuff to fall into place. He gets hired at _Midnight_ —the restaurant John serves at—part time, swings a photo gig from an online posting for a wedding, and hops a bunch of clubs to get the feel for them and see if he can’t manage to worm his way into the DJ stands.

In the evenings, he gets the feel for his roommate. Overall, his takeaways are that John has horrendous taste in movies, he plays the keyboard in their room with his headphones on for the most part, and that he’s almost always on his phone.

When Dave asks about that last one, John looks up and grins. “I’m a popular guy, Strider. What can I say?”

The blonde laughs about that.

Dave gets restless again, murmurs to himself and scribbles down bad raps. John laughs at them and asks if he’d like to get out on the town, maybe meet some of his friends.

“Yeah,” he pushes himself up from bed, cracking his spine. “I’m down.”

May turns into June, then July, and then August, way too quickly. The weather’s still great when the both of them get emails about classes. Dave knows most of their coworkers by name and doesn’t spill burgers all over the floor anymore. He can tell a boldfaced lie about exactly how much cheese is on their sandwiches. If an old lady asks about a particular pasta dish, he can keep his voice even and say, “well ma’am, this comes with spaghetti, but if you really want, I can get you something else,” instead of wanting to murmur, “oh, and by the way, munch my dick you wilted old bitch, it says right there you can change the pasta, but clearly you missed the memo.” One guy at this club called _Juniper_ says he can schedule Dave as a DJ on alternating weekends.

He even gets to photograph some cool art stuff. Like, for money. How sweet is that?

“Class, huh?” John walks into the living room where Dave is sitting cross-legged and scribbling an animal skull on a sketchbook. He’s wearing his boxers and his Ghostbusters tramp stamp is peeking over the waistband. The blonde snorts. “And here I was getting so good at doing nothing all afternoon.”

“Correction,” Dave says, “You were getting good at getting your ass handed to you in fighting games.”

“ _Japanese_ fighting games, dude,” John exasperatedly replies. “We both know those are all bullshit and you’ve learned all of the combos like an asshole.”

“But _all_ fighting games are Japanese, man. It’s like, a rule of the universe that they have to have their paws on something as soon as more than two buttons can be strung together and more than two characters are trying to knee each other in the crotch.”

The shorter male rolls his eyes and pads over to their fridge. “You gonna be okay with class on top of all your other stuff?”

“The better question is, is school gonna be okay with a _Strider_ on campus? I mean, Seattle has only just gotten me in its arms.”

“Oh no, how will it handle one more blonde ass-douche with a huge ego,” John jokes. Dave chuckles lowly in response. “What’s your major, anyways?”

Dave dramatically slams a hand over his heart and pushes himself onto the floor. “I’m so wounded. What happened to those three magical months of summer, Egbert? You tellin’ me that what we had was just for the _season_ , and now that school’s back, you gonna act like what we had wasn’t special?”

Egbert sits on the floor, kicking his roommate with the back of his heel and snorting. “You don’t know mine either.”

“Fair enough.” The brunette hands him a lemon tea. “Thanks. So, what is it? Wait, no, let me guess. You watch shitty movies all day and critique them and then walk out laughing. Or wait! You mix chemicals and write movie reviews at the same time. That’s why some of the words like _worst movie ever_ come out as _wow that was so great, can’t wait to watch it again_.”

“Holy _shit_ , Dave,” John is wheezing laughing on the floor of their barely furnished living room. “No man, you’re so wrong. I’m a biology major, minor in music. I bet you’re a photo major with something _ironic_ like robotics as your minor.”

“Half right. The ironic minor is English, because I can’t write for shit and I sure as hell can’t read anything much harder than _Harry Potter_. My best friend would love nothing more than to tell the story of why that happened, but lucky for me, she lives in New York and I only have be tortured by her every once in a blue moon, when she decides I’m too awesome to be left alone or something.” Dave rambles, sort of accidentally slipping that personal piece in there, but it’s too late to take it back. “Relative of mine’s real big into machines though. I think he goes to some fancy engineering school in Georgia.”

“Ha! My best friend’s an English major. Trust me, he would like nothing more than to shove five thousand crazy words per minute into my head, but I just don’t _care_ ,” John says, leaning back on his elbows and smiling. Dave finds himself smiling back too. “God, sarcasm is just _so great_. I ought to call him right now and thank him for teaching me about it down to the letter _m_.”

“Oh god,” Dave breathes, wiping a tear out of his eye. “Christ, this dude sounds even worse than Rose.”

“Oh, don’t worry. He’s at his parent’s house right now, but I’m sure you’ll run into him eventually, since he goes to your school. Not to mention, he loves busting into my place when his roommates aggravate him. That’s _all_ the time, by the way.”

Dave finishes laughing and takes a long sip of his tea. “I think this is the start of a beautiful, snarky friendship, Egbert.”

“I’m so _honored_ , Strider,” John giggles back. “But don’t think this means you’re out of doing the dishes."

“Damn. Foiled again.”

“You’re welcome.”


	2. Chapter 2

Just because he's accepted in school, and his jobs – all three of them – are coming in at a steady rate despite his belief and background mindset that some shit was gonna hit the fan and the walls were gonna come crashing down, it does not mean that finances are all hunky dory.

A week before classes start, Dave finds himself at the office of financial aid, fighting tooth and nail to keep his quickly-sought in-state and independent status. He has to bitch because  _my guardian is not around and that is the end of that, no phone calls, do not pass go._  He has a place to live and a scholarship and he doesn't have to pay off his asston of debt  _yet_  and he says,  _would you please just sign the form so I can get this loan, goddamn it_.

For three days, he is stressed and he doesn't sleep or eat and it sucks. John is cool about it. He even offers to make him tea and fresh fried tortilla chips once everything is settled. Damn, he rocks.

As soon as school starts, Dave buys a real bus pass, using a student discount from the university. He settles into his first class on Monday afternoon groggy from a long night at  _Juniper_. His beats were sicker than ever though, and now the owner's asking him to come in every weekend and it breaks his heart to turn him down.

The tips at  _Midnight_  are just too good.

On his third day of school, Dave slumps into the apartment just long enough to pick up his camera before heading back out to take pictures of some guy's dog and baby. He's not particularly fond of either creatures, but money is money and the dude's packing some sick cash for a stretched canvas photo of two drool machines.

He pauses in the doorway, finding a pretty short dude with dark, messy hair and more freckles than he has, which is saying something. Keeping his cool despite being pretty spooked, Dave says, "Sup," and the stranger glares at him.

_What's his damage?_

"Are you the guy who, so eloquently put, is apparently such an astoundingly fantastic roommate that it has managed to bring the single-celled organism known as John Egbert to metaphorical tears?"

"Dude,  _what_?"

"Are you Dave Strider? Do you live here? Do you understand the  _language_  I am currently speaking, you complete waste of oxygen?"

The key turns in the door before he can answer, and John looks between them before snorting. "Nice to see that you two have met."

"I wouldn't say that, exactly. Shouty here's been shoutin' at me something fierce, probably telling me exactly how hot my bod looks in these black jeans. Hasn't gotten to the whole writing his name and number down and sticking it in my pants part yet."

"My  _god_ , you are completely insufferable and I now completely understand Egbert's masochistic pleasure in enjoying your company."

"Karkat, seriously, Dave is cool. Both of you need to tone it down a little," John teases. "Karkat, meet Dave, my roommate." Dave lifts a hand. "Dave, meet Karkat, my best friend." Karkat folds his arms across his chest and turns up his nose. "Sorry I was gone, just went to get milk and snacks from the store."

"You need money?" Dave asks, finally sidling out of the living room to get what he came for.

"Nah, thanks though." He can hear John rustling through plastic bags in the kitchen and Karkat absently commenting on the experience. It would be fine except the only volume shouty has is  _incredibly loud_. Dave snickers about their conversation as he flips through SD cards and cleans his lenses. When he comes back out, John turns towards him with big blue curious eyes.

 _Damn those are_ _ **still**_ _unreal_ , Dave thinks, and then snickers to himself.  _Says the one with red eyes._

"Headed out?"

"Only for a couple hours. Gotta capture man's worst nightmare and a dog."

"And what, pray tell, could be so horrific that you would be scared of taking a couple pictures of, Strider?" Karkat yell-grouses and John rolls his eyes.

"Probably a baby, right?" Dave nods. "Good luck, I guess. Those suck."

"Who're you tellin'." The blonde shrugs his camera bag onto his shoulder and fishes his keys out of his pocket. "You hangin' for a while?"

"He'll probably stay the night."

"You have no idea what I have planned for the night, John! For all you know, I could be shit sniffing and wiping the paper towels off of the nastiest, crustiest shoes you've ever seen for the rest of the evening! What gave you the right to tell me what I'm doing, huh?"

"That's Karkat for  _he's staying_." Dave chuckles. He can see why John likes this dude, and now understands how the guy's  _so_  good at keeping up with his endless rambling. "Gonna come back and watch a flick with us?"

Dave is one second from agreeing, but then he gives them the side-eye. Not that it matters, behind his shades. "If the two of you are bffsies, I'm terrified to find what horrific piece of cinema I'll be walking into and agreeing to torture myself with."

"Don't you  _dare_  put my taste on the same level as his!" Karkat snarls, pulling out a carrier bag of DVDs and Blu-Rays. They are all mankind's worst endeavors – cheesy chick flicks. Dave and John groan.

"I almost prefer Cage."

John pumps his fist as Karkat slumps, grinning wide. "Yes!" Dave fist-bumps him before heading out.

//

//

The tail end of fall semester sees John sniffling, bundled in blankets, and snoring on books that have a lot of gibberish words and Dave hanging out in parks where all the trees and some of the local fauna are dead. It makes for great photos, and best of all, satisfies his morbid and continual fascination with that kind of weird shit.

By now, Dave has had the pleasure of hanging with Karkat enough times to consider him his own friend, learned most of John's online friends' names by heart – Jane (cousin), Jade, Vriska, and Terezi (the last two are Karkat's friends as well). He knows the coworkers he hangs out with until he wants to punch them and the people who call up John just to hear him tell corny science jokes.

Seven months in, Dave really feels comfortable with his roommate and he's  _so_  glad he made this fucking move. He even manages to swallow down the overwhelming urge to cry to show John some of his pictures of graveyards and cathedrals from all over Europe.

John  _oohs_  and  _ahhs_  but never presses him for information that he chokes up about. Some days he just squeezes Dave's shoulder and leaves him alone and Dave couldn't appreciate anybody more than the guy who sometimes plays tennis and sometimes golf and who plays piano better than some professionals.

Right after Dave tells his roommate about his Christmas plans for company, John tells him similarly that Jade is coming in town, and that he has a recital coming up.

"What, like, a piano recital?"

John sticks out his tongue at him. "No, a ballet recital, where I dance on my nasty broken toes and spread my junk doing a one-eighty split on the floor.  _Yes_ , a piano recital. Well, I guess, to be accurate, it's more like an organ thing? I promised a bunch of people at the senior home I'd do a couple pieces."

Dave pauses taking a photo of him to look over the camera and quirk an eyebrow. "Isn't that kinda creepy for Christmas?"

The brunette laughs. "Yeah, it's usually more of a Halloween thing, but my grandma's a little weird."

"Alright. I will put on my finest Sunday dregs and pull myself out of bed at a reasonable hour when I should be half-assing my final portfolio just for you."

"Oh, Mister Strider, how kind and noble of you," John sasses and the blonde snickers. "It's nothing too special. You can wear jeans if you want. Just figured you might wanna get out of the house."

When he mentions it, Dave tries to remember the last time he left. Since last week was mostly prep for finals, there'd been no official classes to attend. He had to have left, what…last week, maybe Wednesday? Damn. "Yeah, thanks man. I really appreciate you always looking out for me."

"You're one of my best bros, Dave. Bros look out for each other." He turns that bucktoothed smile towards his roommate and for one dreadful moment, Dave smiles back naturally, unabashed.

The assurance feels  _so_ good.

//

Dave sits awkwardly in the recital hall until Mr. Egbert finds him by John's description, his elderly mother hanging off of his elbow and curtseying like a true gentlewoman. The man even tips his hat.

The blonde thinks that it's no wonder that John grew up to be such a ridiculously nice guy.

"It's nice to finally meet you," both Egberts-the-elder say, and Dave feels a bit shy at that.

"Ain't nothing special." He always slips back into twang when he's nervous and it's a little tiresome. "Glad to finally meet y'all too."

They settle into seats together, exchanging small talk until people come on stage and give announcements. Dave learns that John's Nanna has a mean streak just like her grandson as she snickers lowly and says, "What I wouldn't give to pull that pompous brat's underpants up until they were on his nose."

Dadbert hisses, " _Mom_ ," but Dave and Nanna laugh, low-fiving each other in agreement.

After another twenty minutes, ten of which are suffering through a kid's first performance and clapping to make him feel better for all his flubs, John comes out to save the show, sparkling crooked teeth, tilted glasses and all.

He bothers saying absolutely nothing before sitting down and looking more serious than Dave has ever seen him.

The music floods the room, immediately deep and dark and haunting. It's not a song the blonde recognizes, but then, he doesn't really listen to much classical. It's captivating. John gets a little sweat on his brow and Dave  _burns_  to record this and remix it and just let the world listen to all its deconstructed nuances.

Dadbert chimes in lowly, sounding unspeakably proud, "He wrote that one, you know."

 _God_ _ **damn**_ _._  Dave is so impressed. "Remind me to get his autograph."

//

On the way home John sneezes and sniffles a couple more times, still working a cold out of his system. "Fun?"

"Amazing," Dave admits quietly. "Could you play keyboard hooked up to my turntables one day?"

"Sure!" John beams. They fall in step with companionable silence. Once they get on the bus back to their apartment, he speaks again, softly. "Hey, Dave?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you having fun?"

Dave wonders where this is coming from, but rolls with it. "I guess. Way more fun than I was having in Texas, anyways." It's not his amazing trip abroad, but in some ways it's better. "Are you?"

John presses his fingers against the window, breathing against the frost and watching rolling hills filled with snow pass. "The twenties are so weird for me. Everything and everyone is changing. It's not bad, I guess, but I dunno." Dave knows the feeling, more than the blue-eyed stocky wonder knows. "It's not always fun, but it  _is_  always interesting."

"That's a funny way to put it." Dave thinks it makes perfect sense. "I like that."

"You're so lame, dude," John laughs gently, and Dave rolls his eyes. "I mean that in the best way. You're cool, but not in the way I think you want to be cool? Oh whatever, this is dumb. I'm glad we roomed together."

"Me too, nerdlord." John punches him  _lightly_  in the arm and Dave still winces in pain.

The rest of the ride is blissfully quiet.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be very busy this weekend, so here is another chapter, and the last two I will probably post in a few days. Thank you for your kudos!! Enjoy. <3

Dave pads into the coffee shop with a couple bags on his arm, intent on getting a drink and a sandwich and leaving. When he sees a familiar surly face, back currently to him, his lips curve up for a moment before he schools that shit. Once he has his stuff, putting a finger to his lips so that the barista doesn't shout his name, he creeps over and elbows Karkat, face as stone cold as a grave.

Karkat, appropriately and as entirely expected,  _flips the fuck out_. He's so appalled and contorted to scream that his voice comes out tiny and scratchy. "Strider!"

"That's m'name," Dave sidles into the seat across from him. As soon as he's seated, he takes a huge bite of his sandwich and gives a withering glance to the huge book the smaller dude had been hunched over. "Please tell me you're not reading Jane Austen novels."

" _Jane Eyre_ is by a fine work by Brontë, you horse's ass."

"Ugh," the blonde groans. "School's almost over, so either you're a bigger slacker than I took you for – in which case, total score for you, Vantas –  _or_ , you're reading this for fun, in which case you lose every single cool point you may or may not have ever earned in your life."

"Sorry to break it to you that I care about classy things and have an opinion that isn't as shitty as yours," Karkat brags, slamming a fist on the table. "I'm sure there's too many words in here that you'd have to look up, so I won't regale you with every fine detail about the world of the novel!"

"One, you're totally right," Dave agrees, swigging his drink. "Two,  _dude_ , if you're looking to bait me into letting you launch a rant about  _Jane_  whatever-the-fuck and her merry friends, you've come to the completely wrong place and you have no idea who I am."

"Now that you mention it, I think I will!"

"And  _that_  is my cue to go," Dave stands up, belches softly, and alley-oops his sandwich's wrapping paper into the nearest trash can. Karkat is still screeching obscenities at him about the monster of a Victorian romance novel. Right when he's about to leave out of the door, he turns around and says, "Oh, and drop by for Christmas. I got you a really shitty present."

Karkat doubly flips him off and Dave chuckles.

/ /

Jade arrives on Friday, sporting legs to rival John's, both in hairiness and cut-like-Greek-sculpture-ness. She grins with teeth just as bad, like braces are taboo in their social circle or something, and gives him a noogie. "Nice to finally meet you, coolkid!"

"Yeah, same," Dave mutters under her pits and eventually tickles her off of his person.

Jade likes cuddles a lot, and she drags the both of them onto a newly purchased beanbag in front of the TV, radiating warmth and shining with skin darker than John's as well. Dave will later laugh about how similar they look, and they both sigh, saying they get it all the time.

Dave's cousin, Dirk, comes on Saturday, as his friends were a couple days behind and they'd decided to camp out one evening instead of booking a hotel. Despite whatever he'd said on chat about his relationship status, him and Jake still look cool. Maybe there's a little less clinginess on his cous's side, and maybe Jake is looking kinda worried, or maybe he's just reading everything too deep.

Rose and her sister Roxy – his and Dirk's best friends respectively – meet Dave with long, tight hugs. Rose tiptoes up to pat his messy hair down and curls her lacquered lips up at him. "How well you are looking, Strider."

"Hey, there's two of us, now," Dave deadpans back, giving her a complimentary shoulder squeeze. "How will we ever know exactly which super cool dude to whom you are referring?"

"Nahhhh, mine's Di-Stri, and he knows it," Roxy chirps, slapping Dave on the back entirely too hard. "Sup everybody, I'm Roxy and I'm here to  _partayyyyy!_ "

"Sorry about her," Dirk finally sidles over to give Dave an awkward bro-hug. He takes a moment to glance at the other half of the room, where Jake, Roxy, and Rose are meeting John and Jade, having a grand old time of things. The place is full of giggles and jokes, and the both of them kind of appreciate the moment to get away and talk quietly to each other. "She snuck a few sips out of a flask when I stopped to piss."

"S'all good," Dave nods back, giving his shorter cousin a soft pat. "You okay, man?"

Behind pointy-anime shades, Dirk's eyes soften. "Yeah, I'm okay."

John takes to Dave's friends and family like a fish to water. He regales Rose with tales of their living together. He gives Jake a hearty hug and compliments his dumb movie t-shirt. Roxy and John have a drink together and giggle like old pals, and even Dirk loosens up with the friendliest nerd of all time. Jade is just as joyous, but she sometimes pounces on them like an animal and succeeds in dragging everyone into a cuddle pile only once the night is late and they all have a little liquor in their systems.

"This is so great!" John finally says, pulling out of the pile around two a.m., a little bleary when he crashes into Dave outside of the restroom. "This is gonna be a really great week. They're nice."

"I think the adjective you're looking for here is  _cool_ ," Dave replies in a mutter mostly to himself, almost forgetting John is  _actually_  there. "Like, so cool."

"Yes, yes, that too." John comes in when Dave goes out and they giggle back in their room. "Rose especially. You guys look alike."

Dave grimaces. "We get that all the time."

"Yeah, well, now you know my struggle with Jade."

Silence falls and Dave thinks John might be asleep until the blue-eyed wonder says, "So, Jake and Dirk. Are they like, a thing?"

The blonde doesn't know how they've made it this many months without so much as seriously talking about worldviews on the LBGTQA, and now he's having a mini-panic attack about John's reaction. He can't think quickly enough to do anything but quietly tell the truth. "Yeah. At least, I think so? It was official the last time I checked, but Dirk says it's complicated."

"Oh, okay," John says easily, and Dave can breathe again. "The only reason I asked is because they went out to the car one time and I thought maybe they were making out because Jake's hair was messed up, but I didn't want to tease them if like…Jake had a fall down the stairs or something."

Dave laughs  _so_  fucking hard about that. "No, no. The stairs didn't win this time, bro. It was probably just sloppy teen makeouts."

"Gross when you say it like  _that_ , man," John giggle-snorts and Dave almost does the same back. "I just hope they can be happy."

"You always shock me when you say stuff like that."

John rolls over towards him. "What, about people being happy?"

"No, just how… _crazy_  nice you are, dude. I'm not hating on that. Just not so used to people being so… _real_  about it. You just met the guys like, what. Five hours ago?"

"Life's too short for people to be sad and depressed all the time," John says, and Dave gets the feeling there's a story behind that, but he's not the type to ask. "It's easier being positive instead. Besides, they make a cute couple."

"I guess. For one neurotic ass who's related to me, and one kid with an overbite as bad as yours and tastes in movies four times worse, they're alright."

"Har, har," John dryly mock-laughs. "G'night."

"Sweet dreams, dork."

//

The five visitors get to know each other, mill about town, and largely do their own thing most of the time. Dave and Rose spend lots of time together, as do Roxy, Jake, and Dirk, and John and Jade. Karkat swings by two days before Christmas with two horribly hand-written guides to romance books and scribbled-on posters of Will Smith in his  _Fresh Prince_  hayday. John gifts him with a bucket of water sloshed in as a prank before giving him a real gift, a stuffed crab with googly eyes. Dave slaps an old receipt from McDonalds on his face and gives him a giant gulp that says  _youre welcome_  on the lid.

For all his swearing and shitting on them, he turns a little red and mumbles thanks. Before he leaves, he even sees Jade and the two of them decide to go out for lunch and catch up. Dave lifts an eyebrow at  _that_  – fine young thing like her hanging out with Mr. Sourpuss himself? John smirks and whispers, "They go out a  _lot_. Where do you think Jade picked up  _fucksharktastical_  from?"

Damn. Sounds like he owes Karkat a high-five.

When the week is out, he knows way too much what Roxy's boozy breath smells like, exactly how many silly phrases Jake English can spout per second, what freaky stories Rose is cooking up, and why Jade rolls around in boxers like she was raised by animals.

It's exhausting.

//

The day after Christmas, Dave escapes the apartment by heading to the sparsest forest nearby he knows, camera slung over his neck.

A couple hours into the relaxation, a familiar, cool voice speaks. "Up to no good again, I see, Strider?" Rose looks warm – warmer than he does, anyways – and she reaches up on her tiptoes to give Dave her scarf. Dave thinks, as he often does, that she's so freaking tiny, and he wonders how she holds such a sharp tongue and scathing wit in such a tiny body. "I didn't mean to interrupt your personal catharsis. I only wished to get away from the madness myself. I should have known that you would seek refuge in someplace I might as well."

"It's cool," Dave assures her. "It's just you. Don't mind."

She's mostly silent as he snaps pictures, keeping a strange pace with him as she strolls through the woods and crunches on branches and dead leaves. Finally, after twenty or thirty minutes of comfortable silence, she ventures to speak again. "How do you like Seattle?"

He pauses for a moment, finishing a shot before murmuring, "I love it."

Rose hums. "I'm glad."

Silence falls again before Dave speaks. "How's Kanaya?" She seems a bit startled. "Shit, bad question?"

"No, no, I assure you, we're still very much happy together," Rose says and Dave is relieved. "I wasn't expecting you to ask, I suppose."

"Surprise. Now dish, Lalonde."

"She is very well. Her family seems quite taken with me, and we plan on moving in together next year, as we will both be finished with our academics."

"Woah, big step."

Rose chuckles softly. "I know. But I love her."

Dave is stunned by the admittance. He's known that for months, just as she has, but neither of them are usually this quietly honest, at least not without a lot of other bullshit clogging up the conversation. "Wow, that's. Okay. Awesome."

"What? The famous Dave Strider, at a complete loss for words because I dropped the l word that wasn't  _lesbians_?"

"Okay, wow, don't go dropping sick burns like that without validation to back it up, Lalonde," Dave murmurs back. "I was just thinking like, wow, how am I ever gonna manage to write a rap that tells Kanaya exactly how much I'm impressed with her gay butt for sticking with your snarky bullshit for so many eons in a row?"

"I look forward to the results in approximately twelve weeks, delivered in USB format to my mailbox."

"If you think I'm joking you, you better take that sassy face back to the curb and ask it for my forgiveness." They both have a laugh, then Dave settles back to his awkward murmuring. "I'm happy. For you, I mean."

Rose is once again shocked, smiling softly. "I appreciate you saying so, Dave."

"Aww damn, that got soppy," Dave groans. "I blame Egbert and his natural talent for having so many open and easy  _feelings._ "

The other blonde laughs her short, refined laugh. "It is truly remarkable, how much the Egbert siblings seem to be able to get across in words and facial expression."

"Dude, John and Jade aren't siblings. As unreal as that fact seems to be, it is the truth, stone cold, coming to you straight from the mouth of unholy angels."

"Oh my," Rose fake-gasps. "How incredibly legitimate this information must be, then. Although, I suppose we have no right to judge, what with our incredibly similar appearances. Middle school was such a nightmare, having to explain that  _no,_  we were not, and I quote in your words,  _sucking face with a sibling_."

" _Ugh_ ," Dave presses his palms to his face. " _Please_  don't bring the dark times back up, Lalonde. We agreed to never ever talk about that horrible experience again."

Rose giggles. "I know, but it is so incredibly pleasant to have a laugh at your expression when I mention it privately." After a pause, she continues. "So, John, huh?"

"He's a great dude…" He trails off for a moment, and then continues, "hell, he's my best friend after you."

She pats the lanky male on the back. "That's excellent, Dave. I had wondered for an incredible length of time if you would have any friends outside of myself, my sister, and your cousin."

"Yeah, well, wonder no more. The Strider express has one new customer on board and completely a part of the team, name etched onto the hall of fame right next to the furnace. I have four whole friends now. I'm a real boy." Dave snaps a picture of an empty tortoise shell and lingers even after the shutter closes, thinking about taking it back to the apartment before deciding against it.

"And you're feeling better? I know after you first returned from abroad, your mental state was awful at best."

Dave straightens his back, looking taller than ever at full height instead of hunching a little like he usually does. "It's all good now, Lalonde. As you would say,  _the blood-fester throes have receded_. Damn, that was a really excellent impression if I do say so myself."

"I find myself inclined to agree," Rose hums, offering her hand to him. "Now, as much as I love the woods, I'm cold and more than a bit lost."

"Shit, yeah, same here." Dave takes her hand. "Let's go back."

//

Dirk, Roxy, and Rose are ready to go. Jake is out with John and Jade somewhere. When he walks back in, he sidles over to Dirk. He tugs at his sleeve with a shy but pleasant smile and everyone in the room can see the way Dirk's face warms at the attention before he follows him out.

Dave raises an eyebrow as John puts a fist on one hip. John grins and says, "I think they'll be okay."

The funny thing is, when John says it, Dave believes him.

By the time mid-afternoon hits, the five visitors have all high-tailed it out. Dirk and Jake don't look so much moony over each other as they do look like best bros who maybe hug and kiss sometimes, but frankly Dave could not give a single shit less about their issues. John said it was okay, so it's okay.

John collapses. Dave collapses.

"Never again," John groans on the kitchen floor.

"You say that, but we'll probably do something equally insane in five to six weeks."

"I'm going to hibernate forever."

"That's called being dead, dude."

"Nah, just a coma. Like, self-induced sleep, but for as long as I want. I'm calling it, that's the next step in science."

"Who gave you permission to be a scientist?"

"Technically my school."

"Damn, owned."

John snores five minutes later and Dave watches him sleep with a small smile and a fluttering feeling in his gut that he largely chalks up to being so tired that he could die.

A few minutes later, he drifts off too, knowing that he'll regret konking out on the tile in the morning.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am incredibly impatient and this weekend wound up being much less stressful than I imagined it would be. Enjoy!

//

John isn't acting  _distant_ , per se, but he's being sort of weird around Dave.

Well, weirder than usual.

Dave shrugs it off as quirkiness of his roommate that he just hasn't had to deal with yet. Since the apartment's quiet and both of them are miraculously off from everything on January 2nd, they sort of kick it in their jams with music playing softly in the background and a few exchanged sentences when they get tired of the mostly-silence.

Just when he thinks John is about to break the weird atmosphere, he starts up a completely unexpected conversation.

"Do you ever think about weird stuff?"

The blonde puts down his headphones and stops fiddling with the buttons of the turntables. "Yeah, I guess. Like what?"

"Dunno. I'm trying to say something, but it's hard. I'm usually much better with words and my brain-to-mouth filter is kinda terrible." Dave snorts a little. He agrees. Suddenly, John blurts, "I like you. Oh, shit, that wasn't how I meant for this conversation to go."

Dave's jaw drops a little. "What, like—oh, shit, for  _real_?"

John fidgets for a moment and grimaces sternly. "Yeah. For real. Like, crushing and dumb cupid babies firing arrows at my heart or something."

"Wow, that's—guess I'm surprised is all," the blonde mutters, face turning flaming red. "That's, oh, shit dude, I'm seriously so flattered, I don't even know what to say. I'm not turning you down, don't look so sorry, shit, I'm just thinking and I don't think I've ever gotten a single confession in my entire life." He pulls his shades up to show John that his eyes are wide and panicked and he's not blowing this off. "The answer's probably yes, but give me some time to think about it?"

"Okay," John bubbles happily. "Okay, wow, thanks, for the consideration anyways, whew."

Awkwardness settles between them before Dave pulls his shades back down and coughs out, "Well, uh, what else did you wanna talk about?"

"Now it just sounds stupid. It was just, stuff I guess I wanted to get off my chest all at once. Nothing to do with romance, really. I guess I wanted you to know because I like you? Oh, holy fuck, I probably wasn't supposed to say that." Dave flushes deep red and John holds up a hand. "Erase that, I said nothing! We're going to talk about this super depressing thing and totally forget everything else I said."

"Yep, sounds great," Dave squeaks.

After taking a deep breath and composing himself again, John says, "I have a friend that tried to kill herself not too long ago." Dave goes from weird gushy panic to deep concern in a second. "Not anybody you met, no. Anyways, the girl was really sweet. Nobody really saw it coming except her little brother, but he was kind of shit. She just drove off and nobody knew if she was coming back that night."

The taller man manages to whisper, "Did she?"

"Yeah, thank god, thank fucking Christ, she came back." John curls in on himself a bit. "I just remember feeling so hopeless and dumb and all the things I said really hit full force. I felt like the prince of dicks. Since then, I've done everything I can to just let her be her own person, make it feel like she's at home with me, that she can keep her own secrets and tell me things she wants. I just want her to be happy. A lot of times, that means that  _I_  have to actually be happy, or look that way." He laughs a little bitterly. "This was all meant to be this really weird interlude to say that I was really confused about liking people, and boys especially, for a really long time, and honestly until the last year or so, I wasn't sure that I liked anyone and it was kind of tearing me  _and_  her apart, even though we were just friends. She helped me figure that whole part out a lot when it sucked most."

Dave is floored. He doesn't know whether he should be crying or laughing or just hugging John and saying fuckall. He settles on sitting in his chair like an asshat and trying very hard to make his throat form words. "I'm glad. That you're both here and okay." After a long pause, he says, "Listen, I have something to tell you. As like, a warning, or just, a disclosure, I guess, sort of like yours but more about me. But. Maybe tomorrow?" He extends his arm as a peace gesture, hoping against all hope that John can understand that right now, this is the best he can do.

John takes his hand with a shy smile. "Yeah, okay. Take your time."

/ /

Dave panics.

He makes a checklist.

  * yeah okay hes good looking i can totally see myself kissing that face
  * cool friend cute boyfriend material
  * the good kind of nerd
  * makes bombass tacos
  * incredible hugs and snuggles tested and proven



Okay, that checklist is just dumb and repetitive. He likes John. He's not really sure why he hadn't considered crushing on him or dating him before, but he's glad the brunette came to him with the idea. It's fucking awesome. Even if it sucks, they can laugh about it later, but somehow, he doesn't want it to suck. He wants to be like Lalonde, sticking it out nine months and moving in with her vampirishly hot girlfriend and being all domestic and shit.

Except oh damn, he already lives with John, they could be having sex in their taken-bachelors' pad and wearing each others clothes (except they do that already on laundry day) and macking face while shitty movies play in the background.

Oh, he's fucked. Maybe he'd already sorta liked John and just needed the push? He knows  _that_ part isn't the real source of the panic.

It's him. It's his own personal issues, like the ones he fucking hightailed it out of Austin to avoid. Like the fact that he's not dead-end broke but in a hell of a lot of debt to pay for when he makes it out of school for good. Like the fact that he thinks he looks too skinny and gaunt and not bad looking but not good enough for John even though the shorter nerd has already told him he finds him handsome on occasions that didn't feature romancing.

Fucking  _hell_ , he's stalling. More than any of that, he knows what he has to talk about if this relationship has a single chance of lasting.

It's his family, and he's not sure he's ready.

But he already told John he would be, and damn does he want to leap out there and say  _I do_ , but not before he drops this fucking bomb and John knows the deal.

//

On January 3rd at five a.m., Dave wakes John up, groggily feeds both of them cereal and fruit, then asks if he can take the brunette to the nearest graveyard on campus.

He's always felt a little more at peace around dead things.

They settle on the grass in somewhat surly silence for twenty minutes before Dave starts talking.

"Okay, so I'm gonna ramble a hell of a lot, and I've been told that I mumble sometimes, so stop me if you can't tell what the fuck I'm saying anymore."

John yawns and nods. "Okay."

Dave talks about everything, even though he doesn't understand it and he pretends that some of it makes sense. His brother was pretty insane and he made so many excuses and he  _can't hate the bastard_ , and some days he's scared of his own shadow, and music is solace. There's abuse and the good times they had and the validly  _horrible_  days and times Dave cried and promised himself that he didn't. Days when he knows he was unloved, days when he knew his brother was wrong, but mostly days when he convinced himself that his brother was  _right_.

He talks about Europe and how everything changed his mind. How people cared and lived  _normal_  lives and for once he was with people that spoke a completely  _different language_  and ate some of the shittiest and best foods he'd ever had in his life and he felt more at home than he ever had with his honest-to-god literal flesh and blood brother. He saw a fridge and it was being used properly and the house was warm and there were no weapons and no fights and it was  _fantastic_. He loved it and he loved traveling and he loved people and he loved trains and all of the sudden, he hated heroes.

He hated them because he'd always thought of his brother as heroic.

When he came back, he wasn't the same, because he'd had time through college to see the light. Europe had been even further away from the reality that was his past. Honestly, he hadn't even known if the man had cared enough to find out whether he was back from the airport after four months across the ocean and two and half years away at college.

John stopped him when he stumbled and a couple times when his shades fogged up because his face and eyes were hot and mostly held him close and let him get snot all over his favorite Ghostbusters shirt. He rubbed circles on his back as he babbled on and on and then delved into what a good friend Rose was, and Roxy, and even Dirk, who looked like his brother but was eight hundred times more amazing than his bro would ever hope to be.

He thanked John, glad that he never pushed, glad that he could tell him these things, glad that he could like him before knowing these things about him, for saying he was cool when he wasn't, and that he wasn't cool all the time either.

John murmurs into Dave's hair, "I like you even though I know those things, too, you know. I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to share," and that's all it takes for Dave to quietly cry and shakily hold him close.

They start dating on that cold day in Washington, beginning when the blue-eyed wonder laces hands with the red-eyed weirdo and tells him it's really too cold not to be wearing a coat outside and boyfriendly warmth would only do so much.

Dave holds his hand all the way home, squeezing it for dear life.

/ /

Karkat has a long, hysterical laugh about them getting together. " _Yessssss_ ," he hisses. "For the first time, I get to witness the  _infallible_  Egbert bumble his way through a relationship—and with a  _dude_  for that matter. Man, if I only could meet fourteen year old you and rub this in your face."

John wrinkles his nose, resettling Dave in his lap and kissing his nape. "Dude,  _ugh_ , no, fourteen year old me was dumb and gross and kind of a huge tool."

Dave leans back into him and moves John's arm so it comes around his torso. "Wow, so much has changed."

"Finally, someone understands!" Karkat and Dave fistbump and John rolls his eyes, pushing Dave away later when he tries to lean in for a kiss.

/ /

Dave is just a couple months away from getting out of school, and he maybe even has a job lined up that might keep him in Seattle most of the time and sometimes in California, kinda walking on cloud nine. Tips are good at  _Midnight_ , sets are awesome at  _Juniper_ , people still want bullshit photos of their little heathens for sicknasty cash, he doodles dead things and shitty comics sometimes.

John is the best boyfriend. He is also incredible in the bedroom and the thought of the last time the dicks touched makes his face flush hot.

Everything is going so well that he forgets his usual paranoia and terrors that anything could go wrong at any given moment and so of course within the next week shit hits the fan and his world comes crashing down at a moment that should be great and full of love and so sweet and awesome he could shit himself.

Bro leaves a voicemail and Dave, like a fucking moron, hits the phone in the middle of having sex because it's caught in the covers and he loses his boner more quickly than the dinosaurs died in prehistory.

"Dave. Three days. Bring the sword."

_This. Sucks._


	5. Chapter 5

The first day he sort of curls up to himself and John makes him hot chocolate and soggy French toast. John tells him that he'll go with Dave and hold his dumb gay baby hand. It makes him feel better, even though he can't quite speak yet. When the brunette sinks on the blonde's bed, sitting on the edge, Dave just holds his hand and thinks so hard,  _I know it's only been two months, but I love you_.

The second day, he finally starts to pull his shit together and sighs a lot. John's at work, so he calls Karkat and sits in companionable silence with him at their favorite coffee spot. After a good hour of the blonde's moping, Karkat slams his ceramic mug down on the table and scowls. "Alright, enough of this audacious snail feces. Which metaphorical animal and-or inanimate object is eating you?"

"The beast known as paranoia, dude," Dave breathes on his cold coffee, one second away from pushing up his sunglasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "My bro's coming in town."

"Am I correct in making the assumption than he's an even bigger thrashing dickweed than you?"

Dave groans and dramatically puts his face against the table. "Yes, man. Like, so much worse. Probably so terrible that gazelles smell his ass and want to put extra shit on it."

"I can't hear you, you're mumbling."

"And you're shouting. What else is new?"

Karkat snarls and kicks back in his chair. "Whatever. Color me unsurprised that you are unwilling to take my olive branch of tentative un-hate-itude."

"Un-hate-itude, seriously?" That gets a chuckle out of the blonde. "Just say friendship, man."

" _Anyways_ ," short and snarly huffs, "good luck, I guess. I'll be around if you decide that you require my eternal grace and blessing, to be honored with my presence."

"More like, I'll be around if you need somebody five hundred times cooler than you to refill your empty cool meter," Dave chides and Karkat rolls his eyes. "Seriously, thanks, Vantas."

"You're welcome."

Day three opens with John rushing from lab to meet his boyfriend and roommate at the city center bus station. The blue-eyed man asks how the blonde knows he'll be here, and Dave answers that he just  _knows_  the crazy bastard.

Like clockwork, the man himself appears, sporting sloppy-hair, baseball cap, fingerless gloves and pointed shades. Just like he remembers. Dave shakes for a moment until John reaches for his hand. Then he grabs it and holds on and hopes he isn't hyperventilating as he steps towards him.

Bro speaks first. "Hey."

"Hey."

Dave can tell he's assessing. "Boyfriend?"

"Yeah."

John just sort of waits quietly and waves at the man awkwardly. After a moment, the tall man holds out his hand and Dave holds up the broken katana, more than a little fearful. "No strife today, li'l man. Just want that back. We need to talk."

Dave pushes the sword at him with huge relief, shoulders sagging from being tense. "Okay." He gives his boyfriend a look before dropping his hand. "I'll only be a few minutes, okay?"

John nods, worried. "Call me if you need anything? I'll be here."

"Thanks, man." He looks at his brother for a moment, and then the blonde turns back to his boyfriend and plants a quick kiss on his cheek.

Bro and Dave just  _walk_  for a while, until they're away from the people in the downtown area by just a bit. After they stop, Bro holds out a wad of cash and a check, besides. Dave looks down with wide eyes. "Why?"

The older man shrugs. "Don't overthink it."

Dave reads the check and overthinks it. "This is almost enough to pay for my loans." Like, all of them. For all four years of college, including the huge debt of his study abroad experience, and this shitaster that's been financial hell since moving to Seattle. "You didn't…do anything illegal to get this, did you?"

"No," Bro answers sternly. "Just needed to get myself in order first."

His younger brother wonders if this is payoff for all the hell he put him through as a kid. If this is his belated way of saying he cares at  _age fucking twenty-two_. If maybe he's saying sorry. "Okay," Dave says, a little shaky. "Are you, uh. Staying?"

"No."

"Cool."

After a few more moments of awkward silence, Bro finally says, "He nice? Your boyfriend."

"He's amazing," Dave says honestly. "Probably don't deserve him."

"You do," Bro says, and then he leaves.

Damn that elusive bastard.

//

He meets up with John and says, "I need to go to the bank."

John links arms with him and smiles softly. "Alright."

When the deposit clears a week later, Dave almost shits himself and starts calling the student loan department before he does something stupid with the money.

//

A couple weeks later, midterms pass and both of them have a momentous Thursday off from  _Midnight._ Dave and John play games until they're sick of them and then they get flirty and the game sort of gets forgotten.

John nips at the underside of Dave's stubbly chin and carefully pulls his thin boyfriend into his lap. "This okay?"

"Egbert," Dave groans, sinking down so their hips are touching, "Seriously?"

"Consent is very important!" John chides, slipping his large hands under Dave's shirt. "May I please take your shirt off and kiss you all over, sir?"

"You may ravage me to your heart's content," Dave says, slipping his shades off and inhaling sharply when John pulls him even closer. "Do I have permission to do the same?"

"Yes, you may," and with that, he pulls off John's glasses and unbuttons his pants. Dave pulls John's lips away from his shoulder to kiss him breathless. After a few more moments, when they've scrabbled out of the rest of their clothes and left kiss marks all over each other's collars, Dave laughs at the tattoo just over John's behind, as he often does.

"That slime is always grinning at me when I touch the finery that is the Egbert rump."

John chuckles. "It should bring a smile to your face. You can feel like a ghostbuster when you  _destroy the ass_."

Dave guffaws, laughing endlessly against his boyfriend's back and reaching for lube in a kitchen drawer. "Holy shit. Now I'm gonna blow my load laughing my ass off."

"You don't even like screwing me when you can't see my face," John rolls his eyes and slathers lube on his fingers before running his pianist's hands up and down Dave's dick carefully.

Dave's breath hitches in a strange pattern as he too reaches for lubricant and desperately itches to reciprocate. "Call me a romantic."

"Let me ride you! That's romantic."

"That is  _way_  too criminally hot, is what that is," Dave says, flushing hot as he finally makes John throw his head back and moan. "Besides, you always take care of me, dude. Let me ride  _you_."

John bites his lip, blue eyes dark and hazy. "Oh,  _damn_ , seriously? You would do that?"

"Egbert," Dave breathes against his skin, leaking a bit and rutting their hips and dicks together, "I would let you do anything to me."

He means it.

John can tell and he smiles bashfully, all dark and gorgeous and flushed.

Dave rides him and talks too much and John thinks it's adorable, cooing encouragement in his ear when John comes in deep. He bites and John complains about having come in the condom  _and_  in Dave's ass _, sorry dude, I know that's gross and definitely anti-protocol_. Dave grins bonelessly; red eyes roaming tiredly as John lifts him up gently and cleans up their nasty-ass mess.

When he slips off into sleep, he feels John lift him up with his burly man arms and deposit him on his bed. Before John can slip away, he pulls him down and whispers, "You're the best."

John giggles in his ear, slipping next to him despite the bed being  _way_  too tiny for two people. "Thanks, I try. We're moving our beds together soon, this sucks."

"Alright."

//

"Of course we'll be there for your graduation party," Rose says, sounding mildly affronted on the phone. "Kanaya and myself, I mean. Roxy and Dirk shall be rather preoccupied with their own shenanigans."

"Aww yeah, sweet, now Kan and I can swap shitty stories about you," Dave scrubs the dishes in John's  _Ghostbusters_  undies, sliding the phone against his ear. "Tell her she has my full permission to make me a pretty princess before the party."

"I am certain she will be pleased to hear that," Lalonde replies, humming a bit. "The shit talking, I am not looking forward to, however. Please know that if anything criminal escapes, I will also require your word that my shit talking to John shall be equally unabashed."

"Okay,  _woah_ , our five-month unwedded living-together honeymoon bliss has got nothing on your year and a half of almost-marriage purchasing a home together and being old lesbians together with cats. Not sure if John's ready for the dark days of Strider."

"He's been dating you for almost half a year, and living with you twice that. I'm sure he's ready for anything. Speaking of, will the two of you still be living in the same apartment?"

"Yeah. We might buy a bigger bed though. Smashing our two twins together isn't exactly doing a guy who's six-four and another who's all muscle at five-seven a whole lot of justice. I would give the cuddles a strong C-plus, but that isn't for either of our lack of trying."

Rose chuckles. "At least you  _are_  trying. It's good to hear you so pleased, Dave."

"Well, duh. I mean, I love John," Dave says this easily to Lalonde and wishes he could tell his boyfriend the same.

"I suppose now would be a good time for me to go,  _gasp_ , I am so incredibly surprised and impressed by the speed of your maturity. I am so startled that you admitted it that I may in fact shed a single tear."

"Oh shut the hell up, Lalonde," Dave chuckles. "You always know  _everything_. Bet you knew we were crushing on each other when you came over for Christmas."

"I admittedly had my suspicions."

"You  _crooked_  old cat lady. I hate how you and Dirk  _do_  that."

//

In the in-between days, waiting for the graduation party and not really having a whole lot to do because both he and John don't have school, they talk a lot.

John talks about his family a bit, about how him and his dad used to drive each other up a wall until he almost died in an accident and he realized how, as crazy as he drove him with all the baking and pranks and stuff, he was really a cool dude. His dad had helped him move several times, and was proud of him for lots of things, but John said what had made him laugh the most is when he lifted the fridge to get something important that had dropped under it. His father had left him a little signed note that said he was a man now, and he lost it.

Dave talks about his weird obsession with all the dead stuff and what a righteous little shit he was in middle school. He even feels brave enough to mention the horrendous fallout that was dating Rose, back before he figured out that ladies were plenty hot but he just wasn't that into them, and at the time when she got the  _kissing boys_  part of her life over with and moved straight onto chicks once her curiosity was satisfied.

It isn't all about the  _sex_  for once, and although he isn't exactly the poster-boy for relationships (mostly because he's had all of  _one_  when he was fourteen, and a couple other one-offs and nothing else), he'd go so far as to say his is pretty healthy. John talks about his borderline asexuality that he'd been dealing with and coming to terms with until he was twenty, even mentioning sheepishly that Jake had some of his same problems and that had been why they'd hit it off so well last Christmas.

"The weird thing was," John had also rambled while they were on the subject, running his hands through Dave's hair, "I didn't have a problem with homosexual people. I didn't learn what demi-romantic was until later, and I thought I was that and asexual for a long time, but I never considered that maybe I loved girls but wanted to have sex with guys too. When my hormones kicked and all of the sudden, I really wanted it, but I wanted to love the person I was with first?" John shyly laughs. "Oh gosh, this all sounds really silly, doesn't it? It doesn't matter any more, I love you, and we have plenty of soppy sex, and it's all good."

"S'no worries man, I love you too. Whatever category that falls into, that's where we're at." Dave offers, sort of embarrassed that after all that time avoiding saying it that it slipped out so easily.

"Enough about that! Tell me about all the cool places you went to in Europe. Well, if you want, I mean."

Dave does. He tells him about the great big old buildings in Florence and the house he lived in just outside of the city center. He talks about the  _duomo_  and all the people selling selfie-sticks in front of it. Then he moves on to Venice, then Sicily, his favorite place. He says,  _the cannoli were amazing, then I had mozzarella squares with honey, and the best pizza_ , and John says,  _so it was all about the food then, ha, ha!_  After that, he talks about Berlin, which was somberly modern and amazing, and Budapest and Dublin and London and Bern and Geneva.

 _Main takeaway,_ Dave says, _there are a lot of churches. People really love their Jesus there. After church number five thousand, when somebody asks you whether you want to see old sculptures and paintings of even more Jesus, you have to put your foot down and be like, no, no more, we're done here, that is completely enough of this horseshit._

They both fall asleep halfway through him laughing about all the crazy shit him and a friend of his got into in Hungary after all his train-hopping.

//

Dave's potential post-grad job falls through, but he hears about another one, maybe a better offer, around the same time John starts going batshit over an interview with one of the best medical research institutes in the state.

Rose and Kanaya crash at their pad and come eat dinner at  _Midnight_  with Karkat. For whatever reason that Dave doesn't catch because he's back in the kitchen getting another table's food, Karkat and Kanaya completely hit it off and become great friends and hell, who is he to deny a good thing?

By now, Dave's given up pretty much all of his weekends at  _Juniper_ , but that gives him more early nights to eat dinner with John.

They buy a big bed and cram lots of silly and serious conversations in and have a great big party to celebrate getting out of college with lots of friends crashing at their place again, and they tiptoe over them once they're asleep and hold hands going back to their room, snickering about having doodled on all of their friends' faces.

The beginning of year two is on sturdier ground than year one and Dave has it in him to relax and just sleep.

He even leaves his shades folded next to John's glasses and considers it a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming along on this ride and hope you enjoyed it. :)


End file.
